January recipe: Stuffed cabbage leaves

Stuffed cabbage leaves

This recipe is loosely based on the classic Greek dish dolmas, stuffed vine leaves.  Vines, and by extension vine leaves, don’t tend to be a staple crop in Britain, although I daresay they are obtainable from specialist shops if you look hard enough.  However, the handsome dark green Savoy cabbages make a satisfactory wrapping for the filling.  This is a colourful, mildly spicy dish to cheer up a grey winter day, which is very convenient as Savoy cabbages are at their best in the middle of winter.  Here’s the recipe.

Stuffed cabbage leaves (serves 2)

Approximately 12 oz (approximately 350 g) Savoy cabbage

8 oz (approx 220 g) lamb mince or beef mince

Half an onion

1 oz long-grain rice

2 Tablespoons (2 x 15 ml spoon) chutney*

2 oz (approx 50 g) raisins

Half a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) paprika

2 teaspoons (2 x 5 ml spoon) cornflour

Cook the rice according to the instructions on the packet (or use leftover cooked rice).

Separate 8 large leaves from the cabbage, trying not to tear them (the odd rip doesn’t matter).  Cut out the hard base of the stalk from each leaf, leaving a V-shaped slot.

Blanch the cabbage leaves for 2 minutes in boiling water.  Drain, then leave to cool.

Shred the remaining cabbage finely.  Peel and chop the onion.

Fry the minced lamb or beef in olive oil over a medium heat until browned.

Add the onion and shredded cabbage, and fry gently for another few minutes until the vegetables are starting to soften and colour.

Remove from the heat. Stir in the cooked rice, chutney and raisins. Season with salt and pepper.

Divide the mixture between the 8 blanched cabbage leaves, and fold each leaf over the filling to make a parcel.

Put the parcels in a single layer in a casserole dish.

If the tomatoes are very coarse, or if you want a smooth sauce, liquidise the chopped tomatoes.  Stir in the Worcestershire sauce, paprika and cornflour.  Pour this over the cabbage parcels in the casserole.

Put a lid on the casserole and cook in a moderately hot oven at about 180 C for about 45 minutes, until the cabbage is tender and the sauce has thickened.

Serve with long-grain rice.

I don’t think this would freeze very well, although I’ve never tried.  

 

*Home-made tomato chutney works well in this dish

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. Book review

Abacus 2008. ISBN 978-0-349-11675-4. 233 pages.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is set in Botswana in the 1990s.  All the characters are fictional.

Mma Precious Ramotswe is the first and only lady detective in Botswana. Having established the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency with a modest legacy from her beloved father Obed, she now sets herself to solving her clients’ problems, large and small. In this she has the help of her secretary, Mma Makutsi, various old friends and acquaintances at the hospital and in the police, and the shy Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. But her greatest assets are her own powers of observation, intelligence, and a keen appreciation of the foibles of human nature.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is a highly enjoyable, light, quick read. The book is structured more like a collection of linked short stories than a novel, making it easy to read in short snatches of time. Most of the cases occupy a single chapter, and there are also stories describing Mma Ramotswe’s childhood and her father’s time working in the South African mines. A sweet and understated love story runs through the book as a common thread.

Most of Mma Ramotswe’s cases are human puzzles, rather than serious crimes. Sometimes no crime at all has been committed.  Where crime is involved, it is more likely to be fraud or theft than murder, and when Mma Ramotswe solves the case and confronts the miscreant, matters are usually resolved swiftly and humanely.  Even when darker aspects intrude, such as traditional witchcraft and a potential clash with the local organised crime boss, they do not overshadow the generally wholesome atmosphere.  The most chilling aspect of the novel is the description of Obed Ramotswe’s time in the mines, which is safely in the past.  Readers who expect a mystery novel to be packed with danger and drama may find The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency something of a let-down; conversely, readers who like a tale full of engaging characters and human eccentricity will find much to enjoy.

Botswana is described with great affection. Mma Ramotswe is proud of her country and has a deep love for its landscapes, wildlife and culture (both traditional and modern).  This is all the more effective because the affection does not tip over into sentimentality. The harshness of the dry landscape is recognised as well as its beauty, the very real dangers posed by wildlife such as cobras and crocodiles are accepted, and the drawbacks of traditional culture are acknowledged. For example, Mma Ramotswe recognises that the tradition of supporting relatives is open to abuse by ‘charlatans and parasites’, as she puts it. Women in particular can be appallingly badly treated. The kindly cousin who brings up Mma Ramotswe as a little girl has been abandoned by her first husband in favour of another woman, and then treated as a despised domestic slave by her own mother and grandmother – all of which is accepted as quite normal.  Mma Ramotswe herself has an abusive marriage in her past. The cousin hopes that this state of affairs will change for the better, and takes great care to educate little Precious Ramotswe.  By the time of the novel it is evidently possible for women who have some money of their own to live independently and to own businesses and property, as Mma Ramotswe does, yet it is still accepted as normal for a woman to have her career path blocked regardless of her ability (“I don’t think I can get any higher because all the men are afraid I will make them look stupid,” as one character says).

Characterisation is deft and vivid, with even minor characters given individual personalities in a few bold strokes. As the central character, Mma Ramotswe is described in most detail, with her strong sense of right and wrong, compassion, warmth and shrewd insight into human behaviour. She is not always infallible, though, as demonstrated by the case where she completely (and comically) fails to anticipate the client’s reaction when presented with the requested evidence.

I found it useful to have an atlas to hand to locate the main places mentioned in the text, as there is no map in the paperback.

Enjoyable, warm-hearted collection of tales from the casebook of Botswana’s first lady detective.

Sun Court, Hadleigh

Sun Court, Hadleigh

Hadleigh is a small market town in south Suffolk, in eastern England.

Map link: Hadleigh

Like many towns in the area, Hadleigh prospered from the trade in wool and cloth during the Middle Ages.  The streets in the town centre still feature many handsome timber-framed houses built by successful medieval merchants.

The East Anglian medieval wool trade forms the background to The Town House by Norah Lofts (reviewed here earlier).  The inspiration for the house built in the 15th century by the central character, the peasant-turned-wool-merchant Martin Reed, may have been one of the houses in the centre of Hadleigh, Sun Court.

According to the Hadleigh town website, Norah Lofts saw Sun Court when she was house-hunting in Suffolk.  The house had been built centuries ago for a wool merchant. It still has a large door onto the street, big enough for a laden pack pony to enter, with a smaller door inset for people to use.

Close-up of the main door at Sun Court, showing the smaller inset door

You may wonder why even the most dedicated merchant would want to let his pack ponies into his house (!).  In The Town House, Martin Reed’s house was originally much smaller and on only one side of the passage.  He later built a solar for his bewitching wife Magda to dance in (Martin’s solar was also, apparently, inspired by one of the rooms in Sun Court), and left a space between the new solar and the original house so that the pack ponies could still get from the street to the yard behind the house.  Later, Martin roofed over this space to create a covered passage from the street entrance to his yard and built rooms above it.  So the packhorses now trotted through Martin’s house to get from the street to the yard.  Subsequent owners remodelled the house and changed its use over the succeeding centuries, but the central passage – and its packhorse-sized door – was such a key part of the structure that it always remained. (Whether this reflects the real history of Sun Court or whether it is purely fiction, I have no idea – but houses do evolve in this sort of haphazard fashion, so it seems entirely plausible).

December recipe: Medlar jelly

 

Medlars

The medlar is an unusual fruit. Related to the rose family, the fruit looks a little like a gigantic brown rose hip.  The fruits can be harvested after the first frost or left to fall off the tree by themselves. 

When first harvested, medlars have hard white flesh and are quite inedible. They have to be left in a cool dry place to ‘blet’, a sort of ripening process, for a few weeks. During the bletting process, the hard white flesh softens to a deep brown paste.

Unbletted medlars (left), partially bletted medlars (middle) and bletted medlars (right)

Once bletted, medlars can be eaten raw, although it’s a fiddly job to pick out the seeds.  I prefer to turn them into medlar jelly.  This amber-coloured aromatic jelly is delicious with cold meats, especially poultry. (So it could come in handy in a few days’ time as an accompaniment to the remains of the Christmas turkey).  It’s a fairly straightforward process, although it’s time-consuming because of the wait for the juice to strain.  Here’s my recipe.

Medlar Jelly

Bletted medlars, approximately 3 lb (approx. 1.5 kg)

Water, 1 pint per 1 lb fruit (approx. 1.25 litres per 1 kg)

Granulated sugar, 1 lb per 1 pint of strained juice (approx. 800g per 1 litre)

Rind and juice of half a lemon per 1 pint of strained juice (per approx. 550 ml)

Sort the medlars.  They are bletted when they are dark brown and feel soft all over.  If when you cut the fruit up you find that a small part of the fruit is still hard (as with the medlars in the middle of the photograph above) it’s OK as long as most of the fruit is bletted.

Wash the medlars.

Cut the medlars into quarters and put them in a large saucepan, making a note of the weight of fruit.

Add 1 pint of water per 1 lb of medlars (approx. 1.25 litres per 1 kg).  Put a lid on the saucepan and bring to the boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer for about 1 hour until the medlars are soft and pulpy.  Remove from the heat.

Hang a jelly bag or a double layer of cotton or muslin cloth over a large bowl.  I use two old tea towels tied to the legs of an upturned stool (see photo).  Pour the contents of the saucepan into the jelly bag or cloth so that the juice drains into the bowl.  Leave to strain for a couple of hours (or overnight, if this is more convenient).

Straining the medlar pulp

When all the juice has strained through, discard the pulp.

Measure the amount of juice.

Put 1 pint of juice in a large saucepan with 1 lb of granulated sugar (approx. 800g sugar per 1 litre juice). Add the rind and juice of half a lemon. Heat gently, stirring all the time, until the sugar has dissolved.

Add about a teaspoon of butter (I am told this helps to prevent the jelly sticking to the pan, and have never been brave enough to try missing it out to see what happens).

 

Bring to the boil.  It should boil at a full rolling boil, i.e. bubbles should cover the whole surface of the jelly and it should boil hard enough to spit occasionally.  Don’t lean over the pan, and keep pets and small children out of the way, as a spit of boiling jelly can give an unpleasant burn.

Boil until the jelly reaches setting point.  Test for set by dripping a teaspoon of jelly onto a cold plate.  It should form a pool (if it forms a bead, the jelly is done; take it off the heat immediately).  Push the pool with your finger.  If it wrinkles, the jelly has reached setting point.  If not, boil for another 2 minutes and test again.  I find it usually takes about 15-20 minutes to reach setting point.

Remove from the heat.  Pour into a heatproof jug, then use the jug to pour into jars.  Cover and seal immediately.  I use cling film and then a screw-top lid.

The jelly is ready for use as soon as it has cooled down, and will keep in a cupboard for at least a couple of years.

Medlar jelly

The House at Sunset, by Norah Lofts. Book review

First published 1963. Edition reviewed: The History Press, 2009. ISBN, 978-0-7524-4870-1. 287 pages.

The House at Sunset is the last in a trilogy of novels telling the story of a Suffolk house and its inhabitants from the fifteenth century to the twentieth. The trilogy began with Martin Reed and his children and grandchildren in the fifteenth century in The Town House (reviewed here earlier), and continued with further generations of Martin Reed’s descendants during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in The House at Old Vine (reviewed here earlier). The House at Sunset covers the period from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. All the main characters are fictional.

Like its predecessors, The House at Sunset is told in a series of independent but interlinked narratives, rather like a collection of short stories.  Each is recounted in first person by a different character, and the narratives are separated by interludes told in third person.  The characters come and go, appearing in the book when they arrive at the house and disappearing again when they are no longer connected with it.

The novel is beautifully written in deceptively simple prose.  The historical background feels very real, capturing changing social attitudes as well as the effects of new technologies, such as the impact of the railway arriving in Baildon.  Some things have surprisingly modern resonances, such as the anxiety of the Victorian shopkeepers when they think a large retail chain is planning to move into the town:

“They sell cheap muck, they give no credit, they’ll undersell for a year to ruin honest traders and then get a monopoly….”

which exactly parallels modern fears when a giant modern supermarket chain announces plans to open a superstore in a market town. 

One of the aspects of the Town House trilogy that I particularly like is its focus on day-to-day life, made compelling by the vivid characterisation.  The main characters are varied individuals, each with their own foibles, fears and hopes, each shaped by their circumstances and experiences, and each with their own dilemmas to face.  Many of the secondary characters are just as vivid, although drawn in less detail, such as the unhappily married Mike and Millie, keeping house (after a fashion) in two rooms and hating every minute of it; or Frances Benyon’s selfish husband; or the mercenary lawyer’s clerk who tries to deceive Felicity Hatton.  In The House at Sunset, the Old Vine starts to change hands by purchase rather than by inheritance, so most of the characters are no longer descended directly from Martin Reed.  Their circumstances vary as social and economic change alters the economy of Baildon and the uses made of the Old Vine. The arrival of the railway changes the street from a residential area to a commercial district and the Old Vine from a private house to a series of thriving shops; two world wars and the Depression reduce it to an overcrowded, overpriced, semi-derelict slum. Similarly, the characters associated with the Old Vine vary from minor gentry to prosperous local business owners – cattle dealers, shopkeepers, restauranteurs – to impoverished tenants and a conscientious environmental health officer.  It’s sad to see Martin Reed’s historic house suffer decline and neglect at the hands of an exploitative property company, though the book ends on a hopeful note with the prospect of a sympathetic owner who may care for the house again.

There is no Author’s Note, perhaps because all the people and events are fictional.

Beautifully written portrayal of the varied people associated with a medieval house in a fictional English market town from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth century.